FOR THE BROTHAS: CULTURE AND INTELLECTUALISM: November 2020

FOR THE BROTHAS: AN INTRODUCTION

It must have been about 20 years ago when I first began thinking about creating a "Cultural Salon" as a reaction to the mundane social circles In Washington D.C. The richness of intellectual and artistic interchange had died, college friends had moved, the internet had not yet become the phenomenon it now is... I romanticised about the Salons of the mid to late 1800's in Paris, London and Berlin and the cultural dynamo of the Harlem Rennaisance. I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman, an artist who lived and traveled with James Baldwin... Jimmy he affectionately called him, and he spoke often of their small cottage in southern France and of the many Artists, Poets and Luminaries that dropped in to chat and relax. Well, the impressionists, cubists, modernists, etc. all hung out together famously in those days and shared their ideas with one another creating a creative greenhouse in a world that was rapidly changing. I longed to have lived in those times, to have met Cassat, Rodin, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Baker, Balwin, well I did finally meet Baldwin and others purely for the joy of intellection upon the arts. This was in the late 1980's and by the mid 2000's I happened to run into a friend of mine from Hampton University who had been living in New York since he graduated in the early 90s. Well, I was surprised to hear him comment that in all of the wonder that is New York he never met anyone who ever really had anything interesting to say about art, literature, architecture, science, fashion or anything... I was so surprised to hear this since it had also been my experience. Well here I am in 2011 attempting the Virtual Salon...

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

DING! DONG! THE WITCH IS DEAD!

A Renewd Optomism In The American Way Of Life...

Let's compare Trump’s political defeat to the virtual demise of the wicked witch of the east or west! The parallel is clear in spite of the artificially clueless and deliberately murky manner of twenty-first century American culture. Notwithstanding, so many Americans and dreamers mark November 6, 2020 as the first time in four years they could stop living in fear of an omnipresent evil. To these good people a new optimism emerged when the Trump administration died due to causes of the popular and electoral vote…

When The Wizard of Oz premiered 81 years ago on August 25, 1939 its messages of safety and danger ran concurrently with the rise fascism. The Nazi party was rising in Germany. The evil regimes of Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain spearheaded the expansion of fascism in Europe. Millions of people would die in a second world war in order to set humankind back on a path to freedom. In comparative contrast Trumps presidency shows an incontrovertible likeness to the popular rise of Hitler and the deadly, fascist regimes of his time. Many believe that Trump has wittingly spirited into life the likes of an old American evil not seen since the heyday of the Klu Klux Klan… his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again" is encrypted with divisive and hate-mongering allusions to racial superiority, systemic disenfranchisement and oppression.

As the news that Biden had been declared President-Elect broadcast over the innumerable streams of social media I heard a solid hour of urban revelry in the streets… fireworks, singing, shouting, horn-blowing, dancing, cheering and the like. I quickly summoned my friends to join me for a long awaited cocktail party and we Cheersed-In the historic occasion in my garden on the unseasonably warm night of November 6, 2020…

Reveling that night we borrowed a familiar tune from The Wizard Of Oz making it our theme. We felt safer in the moment but each of us understood that certain danger lay ahead and as we had done with our votes committed to face and challenge our fears head on. That an evil so profound could have grown to power right before our eyes was a bitter wake up call. That evil I'd put in check for the moment. In the ensuing months and years we understood that we would be called upon to rise up to defeat that challenge! But in the moment… it was ever so fulfilling to sing the words…

“DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD!”.

BY BIDADDY BLUES